Whatever happened to “Covers the Island Like the Dew?”

So you think your travels went off the rails? Read Pelle’s tale of getting from Denmark to Panama.

I had my first visit to the re-launched Cora’s this morning. The staff are about 10% friendlier than they were before the franchisee switch; otherwise, it’s exactly the same: expensive food, well-prepared, heavy on the fruit.

My sources tell me that the Thai food place on Pownal Street is scheduled to move to Kent Street near Prince, into the old tattoo parlor space.

Word is that work on Formosa Tea House number three, going into a renovated house on University Avenue next to Bowlan’s, is proceeding, but perhaps a little slower than originally anticipated, as the renovation job over three floors is a lot of work.

Meanwhile, Kenny and Winnie, who have been operating the Formosa Tea House at Ellen’s Creek weren’t there yesterday; they’ve left to concentrate on renovating their own new acquisition, the building on Pownal currently occupied by the aforementioned Thai place. No word on what their plans for the space are yet.

I found out this morning that Timothy’s doesn’t open until 10:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings, which nearly plummeted me into an irreversible state of despair (I was rescued by Cora’s, thank goodness). This seems like an awfully late time to open, but then again the streets of Charlottetown were deserted this morning, so maybe it’s simply a wise business decision.

Meanwhile, I’ve become fond of Timothy’s “iced mocha” drink; it’s about as close as you’ll come to the much-loved, sadly retired “Iced Cowpuccinno” at COWS. And it makes the “Iced Capp” from Tim Hortons down the street taste like swill.

Every time I walked into Timothy’s this week I found superstar contrarian David Weale settled in behind his laptop (and a very snazzy laptop at that — sold me on the virtues of the “glossy” screen). David is off to Les Îles de la Madeleine to escape the mosquitos at Cranberry Wharf, so I might be able to move into the chair he’s vacated and take advantage of its proximity to a power outlet.

Timothy’s is about to expand southward (or is it eastward — who can tell in Charlottetown?) with the opening of an outlet in Founder’s Hall on the waterfront. The new place won’t actually be a Timothy’s, but has a home-brew new name like “Island Grounds” or “Island Grind” that I haven’t committed to memory yet.

Despite negative reports about the Rustico restaurant Dayboat from trusted friends, I’m newly motivated to try it out as I learned yesterday that my coincidence-drenched new friend Patricia Van Bolderen is working there (when she’s not slicing bagels with Kim Dormaar at the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market).

Meanwhile, Kim reports that he had a new customer from Virginia stop by the smoked salmon counter at the market a few weeks ago after learning of its wonders from here on the weblog; behold my awesome market-changing powers.

Speaking of which, please stop by Karin LaRonde’s booth at the market next time you’re there and order some iced tea; Karin is very inventive when it comes to iced tea, and some of her recent concoctions have been fantastic.

In a surprising turn of events, after first revealing that it owed the maker of the ill-fated parking kiosks $200,000, the City of Charlottetown admitted that the city coffers are now completely empty, and the ownership of Charlottetown now rests with ParkSmart.

“We really had no choice — we’re broke,” said Public Works Committee chair Stu MacFadyen when asked about the strange turn of events. “We realized that the only responsible course was to turn over ownership of the City to ParkSmart so that we can meet our obligations to them.”

It’s unclear whether the kiosks will remain in place under this new arrangement.

The Interactive Charlottetown Transit Map has now been updated to include the new routes and schedules for routes 1, 2, 3 and 4. Update for route 5 to follow shortly.

Here’s my friend Stephen Regoczei quoted in a 1997 issue of Arthur (from the Internet Archive; original no longer online), the Trent University student newspaper, on New Technology Guru (and Trent alumnus) Don Tapscott:

Prof. Stephen Regoczei of Trent’s computer studies department has studied Tapscott’s work for 18 years. Regoczei says, “Tapscott specializes in technology boosterism. What he predicts is radical change. His predictions have been 100% wrong. While he’s predicting, he’s selling a lot of computer technology… He works for the vendors [such as Digital, IBM, SUN and Microsoft.]”

Tapscott consults for some of the largest information technology corporations in the world. Says Prof. Regoczei, “Its the same old story. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. He’s an advertiser more than a credible futurist.”

I’d been pinning my hopes for a future life in Europe on the faint notion that I might somehow acquire Croatian citizenship by virtue of the fact that my grandfather was born there (or at least in some earlier version of “there”). Then, when Croatia gets admitted to the EU (which, of course, is not a done deal), I’d be in.

Alas, at least according to this consular information sheet, I’m too far out of the loop to qualify.

Given that the three other points of my genetic compass all go back at least one more generation in Canada, I think hanging my hat on the ancestral claim to European citizenship notion isn’t exactly solid.

Time to fall back on Plan B — getting PEI admitted to the European Union.

Dan, Steven, Isaac, MikeG and I went out to lunch at Royal Tandoor for this first time this afternoon.

The whole place is looking a lot better than it did in its former incarnation as Forbidden Palace: there’s a new paint job, new counters and new china.

Although there are promises of a menu at a later date, right now they’re operating in a “buffet only” mode, which seems to be a good approach for a non-Indian-food-aware market. The buffet is set up along one wall of the restaurant, near the back, and consists of a series of cold dishes followed by a series of hot ones:

There was surprising variety in the offerings: chutney, salads, poppadoms, dal, a nice potato dish, etc. They lean heavily to the vegetarian side; of all the dishes on offer, only 3 contained meat. The food had a much stronger kick that the food at former Taj Mahal restaurant next door; it won’t burn your heart out, but it’s not the usual “tamed down for the Island palate” you usually find. That’s nice. Isaac pointed out that there was, in fact, nothing actually made in a tandoor oven on offer.

Although the buffet style doesn’t involve a lot of service per se we were well served by various water refillers and plate take-awayers. They only took cash for payment today; I suspect this is a temporary glitch.

The place was packed today, with everyone from Lobie Daughton to regular people; this certainly bodes well for a healthy future (although they did have a flyer in The Guardian last week, which is probably artificially inflating their early numbers).

It will be interesting to see how things develop from here; ideally they’ll leave the buffet in place for lunch (at $7.99 you can’t beat the value) and mature into a slightly more formal arrangement for supper.

Dan reminded me at lunch today that I have yet to update the Interactive Charlottetown Bus Map for the schedule and route changes that took effect on June 12. I took a stab at starting the update tonight, and got as far as getting routes #2 and #3 completed. The job involves a lot of typing (of schedule data) and fiddling (with map data because of minor route changes), so it takes longer than you would think. Although there was some procrastination involved in there too. I’ll aim to have the rest of the routes done by the end of the week.